In order for a medicament to have its highest efficacy, it is essential to scrupulously follow the indications of the doctor for its correct administration, both in the quantification of the doses and in the number thereof and at the time intervals therebetween.
It frequently occurs that the longer the treatment time elapsed, the likelier it is for the patient to forget or make a mistake in any of the doses. Therefore, the use of reminder and/or warning devices for the times at which the corresponding doses of the treatment must be taken is convenient, at least in prolonged treatments. Normally when several of these days have passed, the treatment is occasionally interrupted, either due to carelessness or forgetfulness or due to believing that all the prescribed doses are not necessary. It is also true that on occasions, the correct dose is not taken at the prescribed intervals.
Therefore the use of a device which facilitates the taking of medication during the indicated period, warning at the specific intervals at which the medication must be taken, is thought to be necessary.
To solve or alleviate this problem, there are a number of embodiments of clocks, timers and similar devices the greatest exponent of best efficiency-quality/price relationship of which could be that described in patent application WO 2004/095148, which refers to a timer including electronic means programmed in the factory for counting preprogrammed time periods a number of also predetermined times according to the program required for the administration of a specific product, as well as warning means for providing an indication of the end of the time period, for the purpose of informing the user so that he or she takes a certain action. In this embodiment, the fact that the electronic means can be “waterproofed”, if desired, by wrapping them in nylon is mentioned. The fact that the timer can be a single-use timer is also mentioned.
However, such waterproofing is at the least complicated and not very effective and the construction of the timer is not even as inexpensive as to allow it to be discarded after a single use. Furthermore, in the embodiment object of patent WO 2004/095148, there is no assurance that the timer cannot be reprogrammed again, or simply reused, by the user, which involves an enormous risk of malfunction, for example, due to an unexpected failure of the battery during a second use of the timer or due to a bad programming, especially if it is taken into account that any manipulation of the timer without a suitable knowledge of its operation will undoubtedly give rise to a bad use thereof, particularly if the user is, as occurs in most of the cases, a minor, an elderly patient or a layman in the art.
An objective of the present invention is, therefore, to disclose a warning device which actually is a single-use device and which at the same time is completely waterproof, impossible to reprogram by the user and easy and comfortable to use, without therefore renouncing to the reduction of the manufacturing cost of said device.